This week was Roy and JoAnne's amazing adventure to Madrid. It started on Monday with a quick trip from Fuengirola to Malaga on the train which was new to us. but it went smoothly and it was interesting to see the sits along the coast. We even saw the Mediterranean Sea on occasion. The train took us into the main station in Malaga so were only had to walk a little way to another platform to catch the bullet train to Madrid. This was a experience. We had comfortable seats and much more leg room than on the plane. The trip took two hours and forty minutes. On occasion the train reached 300 KPH but usually cruised at about 270 KPH.

Utah boys would be right at home in the Spanish countryside. its very dry and arid. They seem to grow mostly olives as you can see from the picture on the right. We did see some cattle, sheep and hog operations and there were farmers out plowing fields so perhaps they grow something other than olives. It didn't look like they received a lot of rain during the year (unless it comes during the winter and early summer months.) Sorry the foreground of the picture is a bit blurry but as I said the train moves along at a pretty good clip.

This picture shows more of the countryside. More olive trees however there are some interesting mountains and hills. This area is pretty sparsely populated.

When we arrived in Madrid we found that the Metro (Underground) station was right there at the main train station so transferring was a snap. We weren't to familiar with the Metro however, we knew that some how we had to get from the "blue line" which was in the train station to the "Purple line" which went close to the Temple and the CCM where we were going to stay while in Madrid. We managed this trick quite well however, we later noticed that if we had gone the other direction it would have been a lot shorter ride. The only problem we had was getting off the Metro. We couldn't remember which stop to get off at. We picked one we thought was close but when we came out of the station nothing looked familiar to us. Fortunately we had the phone number of the CCM and were able to find out which stop was the correct one. We only missed it by two stops. It was a short trip back to the proper stop and we had arrived safely at our destination.

On Tuesday our appointment to sigh papers was not until 4:30 PM so we took advantage of the free time and did a session at the Madrid Temple. It is a beautiful building (aren't they all). We met the Fords who until fairly recently were in our mission but were transferred to the Temple when they extended their mission. They were a nice couple and we spent the evening visiting with them. Oh! the appointment to sign our papers took about 10 minutes.

On Wednesday we had an appointment at about 9:00 AM to turn in out papers and signed for the final time. We only had to wait about half an hour before our papers were processed and ready to sign, Then our attorney informed us that we had to go back across to town and sign a power of attorney so that he could do all of this work for again next year. Well that was a real experience. After we got to the metro stop that he indicated we waited for him about 30 minutes. He then proceeded to take on a long walk around in circles to get to the notary public office it was actually only a couple of blocks from the metro stop but the attorney didn't know exactly were it was so he started out in the wrong direction to start with. Fortunately Elder Andrews had been in town for almost two weeks and had learned his way around and noticed that the No. 20 bus stopped at the corner and he knew that it would also stop just in front of the temple so we rode that back to the Temple and the CCM where we had lunch and rested up for our tripe home. Pres. Hill gave us ride to the train station. He is such a nice man and so considerate of the missionaries. We arrived home at about 9;00 PM that evening.